Expanded Notification System

[lonnieezell]

Currently, we have a notification system that is based around emails. I think we need a more flexible one.

• support multiple notification channels. By default this would be database and email, but should be able to be expanded to include others, like SMS, etc.
• Users should be able to specify for each notification type how they prefer to get it, if at all.
• Ideally, something as simple as $user->notify('some_event', $data) and the system would take care of the rest.
• For database notifications it would sore the message and a type of message, or maybe an icon? that should be displayed with it, the message should support links, etc.
• In the main navbar, or the account dropdown, we should show a notification button with a count of unread notifications. Clicking it shows the 5 most recent with a link to see all
• A users Account section would have a new page to display all of their notifications. This might mean we need to rename the existing Notifications page.